Ancestry Magazine

Parks to Fit

Do you have plans for a research trip or vacation? If so, the National Park Service’s Interactive Map Center  can identify parks, monuments, or historic sites that could be worth a side trip. The park locator finds sites based on search criteria, such as interest in the Revolutionary or Civil War, or cultural heritage including African, Asian, or Native American.

Working Class View

If your ancestors lived in New York City, you may find Five Points useful. Five Points offers a virtual tour of an archaeological excavation of a New York working class neighborhood, highlighting changes over time. For additional information on old New York, you can also access Jacob Riis’s 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. It’s a must read for all descendants of immigrants who lived in those tenements.

75 Years of Obits

Speaking of neighborhoods, there’s a new online community “celebrating the life that begins at 50.” Eons encourages sharing, connecting, and goal setting. But for the genealogist, the biggest draw may be the obituaries—Eons claims to have the largest national database of obituaries back to the 1930s. Plus it offers Obit Alerts, e-mail notifications of deaths based on geographic or keyword parameters.

Testing Caution

Thinking of giving your family health history a boost via genetic testing? A recent Government Accounting Office (GAO) report questions claims by nutrigenetic testing companies—targeting, in particular, companies that offer guidance purported to reduce risk of disease based on genetic analysis. Among other things, the report details a test of these companies conducted by the GAO in which DNA submitted from just two people was submitted as if it came from 12 people. The result? The genetic testing companies returned 12 different genetic profiles. You can read the report yourself online.

Candace L. Doriott is a former contributor to Genealogical Computing magazine and can be reached at cdoriott@earthlink.net.